The Action! Part I: Vericon.
Small Sci-Fi/Fantasy cons are extremely lonely to attend on one's own, particularly if they're very sparce on programming they offer. As a result of these observations, though I enjoyed meeting Sharyn November (sdn) and Guy Gavriel Kay, I'm extremely doubtful as to my attendance of Vericon should it coincide with the Fetish Fair Fleamarket and more people want to go to that.
Dreadfully lonely. It will be nice to go to Boskone with yuki_onna, my friend N, and others.
That's not to say I had a bad time. I'm extremely pleased to have met Guy Kay and to have had the chance to warble at him about how The Lions of Al-Rassan is one of my favorite books ever. (We also discussed my RL name. His mother's family, apparently, is originally from Ukraine, round about Kiev.) And the advance purchase of Ysabel, awesome.
Sharyn, too, was an absolute dream. She was so pleased to hear about how Firebirds is the book that made me love the short story, and we spoke for a bit about deliasherman's next Neef book (I mentioned that "Cotillion" was my favorite Delia short story).
I also attended the panel on action (and missed the one on culture due to the Guy Kay signing and blueness that was only abated by a hot chocolate from Finale - buymeaclue, nihilistic_kid, see what you've done?), where people spoke very intelligently about motion and scene and choreography, and a bit about the Ramayana. There was a good discussion of how action has become very cinematographic (is that a word?) in writing due to fild and television. Also, video games. There was a great deal of fatalism about all the POV shifts and quick cuts, but people also intelligently discussed the way a fight (or sex) scene has to pull its weight in the story by advancing the narrative or the characters or both. The example used was out of The Princess Bride; Inigo Montoya's fight with the Dread Pirate Roberts atop the Cliffs of Despair.
The Guest of Honor speech cheered me immensely, though. Kay offered a "partial defense of fantasy as a mode of fiction." He pointed out that all good fiction is escapism, it's a function of the act of storytelling. He added that his primary goal was always to keep a reader up to 3AM. And that beach reading serves a purpose - it's difficult to read challenging fiction in 15 minute instalments (which I will agree with - Ursula Le Guin and my trips to and from work shouldn't have mixed). He asserts, and I agree, that fantasy fiction has the capacity to be as important, moving, and thought-provoking as the finest stuff you're going to find out there. Moreso, even, as it can tap into myth and legend and bring universal truth home the way historical fiction won't necessarily because it's easy for people to assume you're writing about that one time in that one place. In other words, fantasy allows for the universality of a story and lets the timeless themes shine through.
It helps that he was incredibly funny (and punny). When he didn't wish to engage in discussion of a theme right then, he offered that after the speech whoever did could take him out to the bar and "take his best shot while [Kay] took [his] best shot." There are apparently plans in the works to bring The Last Light of the Sun to a movie theatre near you, and there's a third project for high-end television he can't talk about yet.
All in all? Good stuff. Needs better timing. And more people.
Dreadfully lonely. It will be nice to go to Boskone with yuki_onna, my friend N, and others.
That's not to say I had a bad time. I'm extremely pleased to have met Guy Kay and to have had the chance to warble at him about how The Lions of Al-Rassan is one of my favorite books ever. (We also discussed my RL name. His mother's family, apparently, is originally from Ukraine, round about Kiev.) And the advance purchase of Ysabel, awesome.
Sharyn, too, was an absolute dream. She was so pleased to hear about how Firebirds is the book that made me love the short story, and we spoke for a bit about deliasherman's next Neef book (I mentioned that "Cotillion" was my favorite Delia short story).
I also attended the panel on action (and missed the one on culture due to the Guy Kay signing and blueness that was only abated by a hot chocolate from Finale - buymeaclue, nihilistic_kid, see what you've done?), where people spoke very intelligently about motion and scene and choreography, and a bit about the Ramayana. There was a good discussion of how action has become very cinematographic (is that a word?) in writing due to fild and television. Also, video games. There was a great deal of fatalism about all the POV shifts and quick cuts, but people also intelligently discussed the way a fight (or sex) scene has to pull its weight in the story by advancing the narrative or the characters or both. The example used was out of The Princess Bride; Inigo Montoya's fight with the Dread Pirate Roberts atop the Cliffs of Despair.
The Guest of Honor speech cheered me immensely, though. Kay offered a "partial defense of fantasy as a mode of fiction." He pointed out that all good fiction is escapism, it's a function of the act of storytelling. He added that his primary goal was always to keep a reader up to 3AM. And that beach reading serves a purpose - it's difficult to read challenging fiction in 15 minute instalments (which I will agree with - Ursula Le Guin and my trips to and from work shouldn't have mixed). He asserts, and I agree, that fantasy fiction has the capacity to be as important, moving, and thought-provoking as the finest stuff you're going to find out there. Moreso, even, as it can tap into myth and legend and bring universal truth home the way historical fiction won't necessarily because it's easy for people to assume you're writing about that one time in that one place. In other words, fantasy allows for the universality of a story and lets the timeless themes shine through.
It helps that he was incredibly funny (and punny). When he didn't wish to engage in discussion of a theme right then, he offered that after the speech whoever did could take him out to the bar and "take his best shot while [Kay] took [his] best shot." There are apparently plans in the works to bring The Last Light of the Sun to a movie theatre near you, and there's a third project for high-end television he can't talk about yet.
All in all? Good stuff. Needs better timing. And more people.